Set your story during the hottest day of the year.

Posted in Summer on Aug 2, 2024

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✍️ 87 stories

“Ladybird, Ladybird” by Carol Stewart

Submitted to Contest #262

***TW fire***July 1976, the hottest day of the summer so far, perhaps the hottest since UK records began, and in the driest of years. Even Scotland, known for its rainfall, had imposed a hosepipe ban. Everything about this day was intense; the heat, the glare, the colour clash – sun and sky, yellow, blue and naked above the wilting green - and ladybirds, each a blink of a sty-in-the-eye of the borderland cemetery mourners, red swarm through their black and white swelter, their cluster of onyx and pearl broken ring, diamond in a box.Ashes to ...

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“The Rider” by James Johnson

Submitted to Contest #262

The cool summer rains lashed the paved streets radiating from the ancient Drum Tower on the cusp of Xi’an’s Muslim Quarter. Throngs of tourists skipped between grimy puddles beneath a field of umbrellas, shielding t-shirts and summer dresses from the deluge. The murky sky, which cleaved the heavens and this ancient Chinese city, had loomed ominously all morning. Thirteen million smartphones, alive to the threat, had convulsed with yellow warnings for storms and heavy rain. Undeterred, the street vendors lined the alleyways, stationed behind ...

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“Hotter Than Hot” by E. H. Main

Submitted to Contest #262

Chapter 1 (Pepper) The fan oscillating back and forth over my body was not nearly enough to cool me. I had long since rid myself of any sweat absorbed clothing I had been wearing before. Now all I can do is lay naked in the path of the sad attempt of a breeze and hope for a quick death. Sweat rolled down my face in thick, hot rivulets that no amount of wiping could rid me of. It was hot. No scratch that, it was sweltering. Steaming. Boiling. Absolutely miserable. Why were we so unlucky to have our AC break on the hottes...

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“Rosary Interrupted” by Manning Bridges

Submitted to Contest #262

You'd think the heatwave would've been my biggest concern that day, with all of Ireland roasting like a potato in the oven. But I was stewing in a secret that, once it came out, would make that scorching summer feel like an easy breezy Caribbean day. I was driving home for my parents' anniversary—on the hottest day of the year with that powder keg of a secret sitting in my closet—about to discover how quickly one family could combust. My rental car groaned as it crawled up the sun-baked lane toward the farm. Our homestead appeared, shim...

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“Inferno” by James Scott

Submitted to Contest #262

A single green shoot, pushing up from between the slightest of gaps in the dusty concrete, almost seemed to be enjoying throwing a minute splash of colour against the dead landscape. Too young to classify as anything beyond simply life, Cassian knew upon catching sight of it that come dawn the beautiful green thread would be reduced to nothing but another muted, dry husk. He looked up from his study of the infant plant to monitor the hazy glow on the horizon that signaled the imminent rising sun. The heat of it already evaporating any humidi...

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“It's That Time Again...” by Jed Cope

Submitted to Contest #262

They’re saying that it’s the hottest day of the year. This gets me every time, even before I recall the hottest days of my youth. Those days were hot. Hotter than anything you get nowadays. Then there’s the whole premise of this assertion. It’s just so premature. The first day of the year is always the hottest day of the year at that point in time. Then, as Winter gets bored with terrorising the landscape, and Spring attempts to make peace with the world, there are days that are warmer than the preceding days. I will concede that these are c...

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““SHE”” by Crymes King

Submitted to Contest #262

With nothing but smolder encompassing this beautiful August day; equally too an electrifyingly exciting Friday evening, “Power Station” nostalgically emits from surrounding systems.“The Station” currently streaming glorious; equally glorious being the structured Annunaki-styled sculpted beach-side resort.80’s music enthusiasts savvy enough can vouch the sentiment of that hit song to match the scorch of the day. As stated by Mr. Palmer himself, some like it …A...

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“Traffic” by Gregg Voss

Submitted to Contest #262

Time. Temp. Time. Temp. 12:07 p.m. 98 degrees. 12:08 p.m. 99 degrees. Withering mid-August heat billowed from the Capitol Drive pavement and obscured Park State Bank’s Irish-emerald sign, blurring the tiny, jaundiced Lite-Brite bulbs on the marquee that served as a courtesy to the drivers passing below. ...

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“What We Have and What We Have Lost” by Jaal Mola

Submitted to Contest #262

tw: brief suicidal thoughts, verbal abuse, war and mentions of death It was impossible to think in this sticky heat; but they had had but five hundred arrows left to defend themselves with. In disbelief, Seung read the report once more, feeling the paper stick to his thumb. The sun had risen just an hour ago, and yet its warmth was already making his hands clammy, “Is this really all that we have?” He tried to keep his voice steady, but they wouldn’t last a day with that number. So his hope to survive this siege for another month...

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“Heat” by C.J. Carlin

Submitted to Contest #262

It was a Thursday in late July, the hottest day of the hottest summer anyone in this town could remember. The sunlight poured down like melted honey, making everything and everyone hot and sticky. It was easily ninety-five degrees in the shade, about a hundred and ten if you were dumb enough to venture out. Leaves hung limp in the still air. Lawns had turned yellow weeks ago. Even the finches and chickadees that basically ran the neighborhood were too tired and hot to chirp. The only things that seemed to have life in them were crows and cat...

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“Bull Session” by Mike McSorley

Submitted to Contest #262

Bull Session The final Wednesday was getaway day for both the Memphis Blues and the Sacramento Saints with a Businessman’s Special at 12:30. For the baseball purist, every game should be a day game. The schedule makers back east in their air-conditioned offices had not considered late July weather in Sacramento. It wasn’t just hot. It was a steamer. The humidity, coupled with the late-July heat, made the atmosphere in the Saints’ bullpen almost unbearable. The pitchers did what they could to keep cool. Water-soaked towels worn across the ba...

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“Summer's Lie” by J. Rain Sherwin

Submitted to Contest #262

TRIGGER WARNING: DYSTOPIANToday is the hottest day recorded on earth. Just like yesterday. Each day the heat crawls higher and higher—its record almost a straight line up from the ground to the sun. Stan is sick of it. He’s tired of wearing his cooling suit. He’s tired of mostly staying indoors. He’s tired of living most of his life at night. He’s tired of his stupid job, coaxing ad campaigns out of petulant AIs. Ugh.Stan sits down on the sidewalk and the people, in their cooling suits, flow around him. He sees a few eyes, glancing at him a ...

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“The Never Queen” by Jane Cantor

Submitted to Contest #262

THE NEVER QUEENOne Summer’s day, when the city was a smouldering inferno of superheated alleyways, scorching brickwork, blinding glass, wilting people, she fled, not to the burning wildfires of the country, the charred destruction of centuries-old woodland lost in minutes, but to the basement, the blessedly cool, dark, silent room that few knew and fewer visited. The light buzzed annoyingly, but she could live with that. The heat it gave off irritated her, but not enough to worry about. She wandered through the aisles, through ages of histor...

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“Milagro Means Miracle” by Abby Branco

Submitted to Contest #262

Milagro stared at the giant tubs of ice cream stacked in the case in front of her. It was all she could do to keep from covering her nose and gagging. This ice cream made her sick. She hated the texture. She hated how artificial the flavors were. She blinked back tears as she thought of her mother’s homemade chocolate ice cream made from fresh cacao beans grown on their farm in Antigua, Guatemala with milk from their cow Flor. But this gooey sugared substance? She swallowed, trying to hide her distas...

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“Not The Chickens ” by Sydney Nyberg

Submitted to Contest #262

It was noon by the time Jesse finally got out of bed, when the heat in his room had become unbearable and even the air seemed to stick to him like a thin film of mucous. He hadn’t stirred once in the night and into early morning, and as he pushed his way through the ripped screen door out to the front porch, he wondered if a fox had gotten the rooster. “Y’all seen Mohawk?” he asked. His brother, Joe, sat reclined on the porch steps, one arm propping up his head, while the other held a whittled twig that he used to pick at his ...

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Set your story during the hottest day of the year.

Submissions are closed

✍️ 87 stories

“Ladybird, Ladybird” by Carol Stewart

“The Rider” by James Johnson

“Hotter Than Hot” by E. H. Main

“Rosary Interrupted” by Manning Bridges

“Inferno” by James Scott

“It's That Time Again...” by Jed Cope

““SHE”” by Crymes King

“Traffic” by Gregg Voss

“What We Have and What We Have Lost” by Jaal Mola

“Heat” by C.J. Carlin

“Bull Session” by Mike McSorley

“Summer's Lie” by J. Rain Sherwin

“The Never Queen” by Jane Cantor

“Milagro Means Miracle” by Abby Branco

“Not The Chickens ” by Sydney Nyberg

🌟 Similar prompts

Write about a summer vacation gone wrong.

Start or end your story with a heatwave announcement.

Write about a character who is allergic to heat.

Center your story around an unexpected summer fling.

Contest #262

Enter our weekly contest!

$250

Prize money

266

Contest entries

91

Stories

Win $250 in our short story competition 🏆

Explore more writing prompt ideas: